


Not Exactly a Connecticut Yankee

by cofax



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode Related, Gen, Moebius - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-23
Updated: 2009-11-23
Packaged: 2017-10-03 15:51:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cofax/pseuds/cofax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>SG-1 in Egypt, hobbled by the inelasticity of history.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Exactly a Connecticut Yankee

"God _damn_ it." Sam didn't slam the door: there was no way to slam a flimsy screen made of roughly woven dried reeds. Instead, she let it hang open behind her, for once not caring about anyone's privacy. She couldn't even hit the wall, since it was a delicate contraption of wood, more reeds, and sun-baked mud. Last week, Teal'c had tripped over Jack's ankle and put a hole in the south wall that had taken them two days to repair.

"Hmm?" Daniel rolled over and looked up from the pallet where he'd been napping. He had night watch this week on the fields, and spent the heat of the day sleeping before going to the marketplace. "Wha'issit?" he asked, his face tattooed with the weave of the cloth he'd bunched up for a pillow.

"Something broke through the south irrigation ditch again -- we're going to lose that plot." Sam pulled her headcloth off and scrubbed her hand through her hair. It was getting pretty long; she would have to cut it again soon. This time she'd ask Teal'c; Jack was not to be trusted with a razor.

"Who'd do that?" Daniel asked, sitting up. He'd piled their three skinny mats together for comfort, which was one of the few advantages of being on the night shift.

The water jar -- Daniel insisted on calling it an amphora, but they just ignored him -- was half-full; Sam filled a cup and peered at it for bugs before shrugging and drinking it all. "Who wouldn't?" she replied, hooking the dipper back on the lip of the jar. "It's not like we're popular."

It was true: they were tall pale strangers, huddled on the outskirts of the village, as far as possible from the palace complexes. Only Daniel spoke the language with any fluency, and the rest of SG-1 limited their contact with the locals as much as they could. When Sam had to go into the village, the youngest children hid behind their mothers, large dark eyes peering at her suspiciously past pale linen skirts. The braver boys would follow her, commenting on her sunburned skin, until she came within sight of home or Teal'c appeared to escort her. It had been like this for months, unchanging. Daniel they tolerated; Teal'c they hated; and Jack and Sam they feared.

"It's an insular society," Daniel would explain, over yet another pot of boiled grain and a few scraps of fish. "They're not used to strangers." It didn't help.

In her darker moments, which came more and more frequently as the months passed, one sunlit and mosquito-infested day after another, Sam considered giving in. They'd probably changed the timeline so much already, just by being here, that it wouldn't make much difference if she redesigned the irrigation system, or let Daniel explain to Menet how to keep from getting pregnant again. Anything to make things better, to make things easier.

Or she could even help Jack dig up their guns and take out Ra. Certainly that particular Goa'uld deserved it, more than Apophis ever had. Every day there were more bodies in the river, coming downstream from Ra's new temple complex. SG-1 could make a difference to all these people.

And then she would stop herself. History might be elastic, but moving up the date of Ra's death by 5,000 years struck Sam as something even the most flexible of timelines would have trouble adjusting to. There was no way of knowing what the ramifications would be; literally, since SG-1 would be dust long before any of the changes were evident.

In the meantime, the south irrigation channel was breached, the precious water for their tiny crop flowing uselessly back into the marsh. Daniel nodded at the doorway, through which Sam could see the dusty yard in front of their tiny house and the shrubs marking the edge of the field. "Can you fix it?"

"Sure," she said. "But we already planted that section, and we're out of seed now." They'd calculated it down to the last ounce: there was no grain to spare to plant, not if they wanted to eat for the rest of the season. Jack's fishing efforts were unreliable without a boat, and the raft he'd built had come apart under him twice. The second time Daniel had nearly drowned pulling Jack out of the water, and since then there had been no more boat-building.

Sam hitched up her long skirt, careful of the fragile linen, and sat down next to Daniel. He put an arm around her shoulder, comforting despite the unyielding heat; she closed her eyes wearily.

When Sam thought about dying here, fifty centuries before she was even born, it wasn't being so far from home that bothered her. She was with the people she loved best in the world, after all. Home was SG-1: Jack's caution, Teal'c's sly wit, Daniel's agile mind. It was more that she was rotting here, they all were, unable to do _anything_, to change anything.

They were so hobbled by the need to preserve the timeline that they were on the constant edge of catastrophe. They couldn't be traders: what did they have they could safely trade? They couldn't be mercenaries or soldiers: too much chance of running into Jaffa, and Sam was too obviously female. They couldn't leave the area, in case someone did get the message and came back to help.

So they huddled on the outskirts of civilization, farming -- badly -- a tiny plot of marginal soil, while Daniel brought in a few coins as a cut-rate scribe in the local marketplace. With a little extra cash, they might be able to afford a goat. A goat, she thought, and snickered.

"Next time you get a brilliant idea, Daniel," mumbled Sam into his shoulder, "I'm going to shoot you."


End file.
